Rant threads
 

Hey,

Do we really need to leave rants/flamebait lying around? Take this thread for example, not I'm not criticising the mods handling of it at all and it's been handled reasonably well by the members but why leave something like that open? As Xavier said, it was left in Linux - General for a while incase the OP did return but when it was evident they wouldn't it was moved to General. Why not lock it? Similar threads are created on a weekly basis and provide nothing useful to the forum, if the OP hangs around to respond then thats a different story but I can't see the point in allowing unnecessary flamebaits floating around.

Is there a ruling on this? Is there a reason I don't know about as to why they aren't locked? Is this a stupid suggestion? I'd like to hear other peoples opinions on this as personally, they drive me insane :cry:

yeah, i agree, personally i think everyone needs to rant on occasion, but rants should have its own section, so it does not interfear with users wanting to resolve problems, moderators should either lock threads or move them to a rant section when the ranting gets out of hand...

General is the rant section. If we don't allow people to rant, you can't have fun answering them and the chances are that the ranters would email their rants directly to Jeremy or the mods. And we don't want that now, do we?

It's a fine line. Simply closing a thread because the person disagrees with the majority opinion here isn't a trend I'd like to see. If the thread gets out of control, that's one thing - but Open Source and free speech are intrinsically linked to me.

--jeremy

The restraint demonstrated by the LQ community in not rising to the (flame)bait is far a more appropriate response to trolls than a disciplinary/moderator response.

well said, i agree here too, this is the acid test of every user of every message board on the world wide web...

I have to say that I personally quite enjoy rant threads. The problems they rant about are usually negligible and the way they choose to go about it makes me smile.

They also keep the rest of the board from being clogged up. Without the facility to create a rant thread, all the other threads would keep getting hijacked.

I agree... generally, participants here practice restraint and don't immediately rise to flame-bait. And when an obvious troll does crop up, the threads are pretty quickly closed.

It is human-nature to "rant," some of the time, and a moderator generally doesn't want to be either a baby-sitter or a censor. A thread without anything useful to say or to add generally dies quickly here, on its own.

And for all the rest, there's The All New Linux vs Windows MegaSuperThread.

If we have to put up with a very small percentage of rant threads to prevent the majority of threads from going off-topic or being derailed, then I think that's a small price to pay.

I'm inclined to agree w/ Xavier on this one. Rants are fun, especially when you're not involved. Now after a while, they get out of hand, and should be closed at that point. But until that point, it's often humorous to stand on the sidelines and just watch.

Then there's Xavier's custom "lock line", or whatever it is he says at the end, right before he closes the thread. Always, always always good.

Fair points from all. I was just getting sick of seeing them all the time but I can ignore them :)